Knoxville EarthFest recap and Eco-Libertarianism

This past Saturday was the Knoxville EarthFest. Perfect weather was in order and there was a multitude of vendors and exhibitors on site. The most popular giveaways were reusable shopping bags and bottles of hand sanitizer.

It was a fun event and I learned a lot, even though I thought I already knew a lot about recycling and conservation. While there were several obviously liberal and leftist people in attendance (and exhibiting), there were many more people there who were simply concerned about the state of the environment... and plenty more who just wanted to save some money. Of note: there was an Obama booth at the 'fest (bedecked with "Obama Needs You" signs) and suprisingly few people swarmed around it.

Alcoa Aluminum had some particularly enlightening information to share regarding the economic motivation to recycle aluminum.

For Alcoa Aluminum, one of its highest business costs is energy. For their Tennessee operations, for example, it takes 10,200 MEGAWATTS of power to run a smelter for one day. (1 megawatt (MW) = 1 million watts) That's the same amount of energy it would take to power about 425,000 houses.

However, according to Alcoa's figures, recycling aluminum cans saves 95% of the energy it takes to make a new can. Considering that Alcoa makes enough sheet aluminum to produce 95,000 cans every minute, recycling aluminum really could affect Alcoa's bottom line.

More aluminum recycling facts:

• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours -- or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
  

• We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year. If they were all recycled, it would save enough energy to power 1 million TVs for over 9 years. That's leaving them on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
  

Perhaps Alcoa wouldn't have had to lay off 450 of its Tennessee employees if their energy costs had been so dramatically reduced. Alcoa even said that one of the major reasons it had to lay off was because of increased TVA energy rates.

If I were an Alcoa stockholder, I'd be doubly motivated to recycle those cans after seeing numbers like that.

Besides the energy savings to the manufacturer, there's another motivation to the end-consumer to recycle aluminum cans: cash-in value of the scrap metal.

We recycle everything we possibly can, including aluminum cans. We save the cans and sell them to an area metal recycler. The price of aluminum fluctuates every now and then, but it tends to hover between 35 and 50 cents per pound most of the time. That may not seem like a lot, but it adds up.

We've used cans to fund lots of things. Home remodeling projects, vacations, and general odds and ends. Aluminum cans paid for our Cub Scouts' new pinewood derby track and a Blue and Gold banquet. To throw those cans away is the same as throwing cash in the trash.

As you can see, there are plenty of economic reasons to recycle. As a Libertarian who is for a free market, I'm all about saving money, reducing operating costs and being fiscally responsible. And you'll find that corporations that promote recycling and eco-awareness aren't doing it because they're tree huggers... they're doing it because it saves them money and can help increase their profit margins. And in my book, if you can save money and save the earth at the same time, that's a double payoff.

Steel producers have been following this model for years. It just hasn't caught on with the end-user as much as recycling drink cans has. (Yes, you can save those steel vegetable and soup cans and cash them in, too.)

Paper companies have also caught on. It takes less energy and costs less to recycle paper than it does to make paper from 100% virgin materials.

Paper facts:

• Americans use 85,000,000 tons of paper a year; about 680 pounds per person.
  

• Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 4000 kilowatts of energy. If all the paper used by Americans in a single year was recycled, it would save 340,000,000 MEGAWATTS of energy. That's enough to run 10 million TVs continuously for 11 years. And that's just recycling America's paper... not worldwide.
  

Whatever your reasons for recycling, - God, gold, or glory - I encourage to you go forward with it. Recycling really does pay, in more ways than one.

Here is a link to the Knoxville Recycling Coalition's 2009 Recycling Guide, downloadable for free in pdf format. For people who live in East Tennessee, it tells you all the places where you can recycle your materials. For people everywhere, it has great ideas on how to recycle, precycle, and compost.